question about pregnant platies

This is a discussion on question about pregnant platies within the Livebearers forums, part of the Freshwater and Tropical Fish category; -->
one of my three females has had her babies, now i'm waiting on the other two. i believe they are called gold twin bar ...

one of my three females has had her babies, now i'm waiting on the other two. i believe they are called gold twin bar platies... or something like that. it's fun because they're kind of see-through and i can see the fry's little black eyes inside of the fish. but how am i to tell when they will have the babies? i don't want to use a breeding trap, but i want to keep a close watch so i can grab the fry and get them out of the main tank before they all get eaten or sucked up the filter intake...

For starters, healthy platy fry should not have any fear of being sucked up in a filter unless you are running a very strong filter on a small tank (overfiltering).
Mollys, platys, swordtails all have the same cycles... they can produce 30 - 50 fry every 30 days for an average spawn. The easiest way to accomplish this in a smaller tank so that the fry survive is to heavily plant the tank (even plastic and silk plants can work fine for this), lots of water changes, and heavier feedings of the adults. I feed my breeding adults 3 times/day, but this means I have to do water changes 2 - 3 times/wk to make up for it. I have 6 females and 2 males in a 90 gallon tank and I lose very few if any fry from any of them. The adults are not hungry enough to eat the fry, and the fry have plenty of places with dense plantlife to hide where the adults can't get to them.
Plants like hornwort, wisteria, teardrop rotala, or anything with dense and smaller leaves or needle like leaves are all wonderful for fry. Java moss is one of my favorites.